The programming language market (was Re: [Haskell-cafe] Why functional programming matters

[Artem V. Andreev]

jerzy.karczmarczuk at info.unicaen.fr writes:

> And, PLEASE, Artem V. Andreev, before you say plainly again that I am
> "definitely wrong". I didn't invent what I say, and I hope nobody can accuse
> me of any inimical thoughts against Russians.
I had not the slightest intention to accuse you of anything. Nor did I want to
defend how U.S.S.R treated scientists and all that. But I really wonder where
you get it from that in U.S.S.R computer science was treated in any way *differently*
from any other branches of science? Hardware engineering -- yep, that was a kind of
disaster. Which of course cannot but have absolutely negative impact on programming
as well as theoretical computer science. 
But I have never heard that U.S.S.R authorities banned any kind of software development as such,
on the ground that there were enough mathematicians around...

> Do you think that I haven't heard about A.P. Yershov? ACM still cites him,
> his papers on the system ALPHA (JACM 1966), programming of arith. ops.
> (CACM 1958), etc. Some other names deserve mentioning as well. But what the
> system did, cannot be defended. This "School of computer science" gave some
> theory to the humanity. But no, or almost no software, sorry.
That's of course true. But that does not mean that no software were being developped;
that only means the software did not cross the borders...

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					S. Y. A(R). A.